Astonishing Richness

Most of the new discoveries were simpler life forms known as invertebrates, or animals without backbones. Researchers found scores of sea spider species that were as big as a human hand, and tiny, shrimp-like crustaceans in the Arctic basin that live at a depth of 9,850 feet (3,000 meters). The survey is one of several projects of the Census of Marine Life, an international effort to catalog all life in the oceans. The 10-year census, scheduled for final publication in 2010, is supported by governments, divisions of the United Nations and private conservation organizations. The survey — which included over 500 polar researchers from 25 countries — took place during International Polar Year which ran in 2007-2008. Researchers endured up to 48-foot (16-meter) waves on their trip to the Antarctic, while their colleagues in the Arctic worked under the watchful eye of a security guard hired to protect them from polar bears.

New technology also helped make the expeditions more efficient and productive than in the past. Researchers used cell-phone-like tracking devices to record the Arctic migration of narwhals, a whale with a long twisted tooth, and remotely operated submersibles to reach several miles (kilometers) down into the oceans to study delicate marine animals that are impossible to collect. As many as 235 species were found in both polar seas, including five whale species, six sea birds and nearly 100 species of crustaceans. “We think of the Arctic and Antarctic as similar habitats but they are separated by great distances,” said University of Alaska Fairbanks plankton ecologist Russ Hopcroft, who took part in the Arctic survey. “So finding species at both ends of the Earth — some of which don’t have a known connection in between — raises a whole bunch of evolutionary questions,” he said.

Hopcroft and other polar researchers will now try to determine how long these species have been separated and whether they have drifted apart genetically. David Barnes, of the British Antarctic Survey, said there a number of possibilities to explain how similar species live so far apart. Some may have traveled along the deep-sea currents that link the poles or may have thrived during the height of the last ice age about 20,000 years ago when the polar environment was expanded and the two habitats were closer. Hopcroft and Barnes cautioned that more work needs to be done to confirm whether the 235 species are indeed the same or differ genetically. “Painstaking work by geneticists investigating both nuclear and mitochondrial genes will only be able to confirm this,” Barnes said in an e-mail interview. “It may be they separated sometime ago but similar selective pressures have meant they have not changed much.”

Researchers Claim Enamel ‘Tissue’ May Be Regrowable

For most animals this is not a problem, but in humans, the large amount of sugar and starch in our diet is turned into acid by bacteria living on our teeth, which slowly dissolve the enamel to make a hole in the tooth. If untreated, cavities can cause life-threatening infections in the body. If scientists can perfect a way of regrowing teeth and replacing the drill in the dentist’s surgery, it could have important knock-on effects for patients. In 2005, a survey by researchers at the University of Toronto found that 5% of patients were extremely anxious about visiting the dentist, and half were so afraid that they either cancelled their appointment or failed to show up. By missing appointments, patients risk turning a fairly minor dental problem into a serious risk to their health. Last year, a poll by the Irish Dental Association found that parents passed on their fear of dentists to their children by telling them they were being brave or had nothing to fear from a visit. Despite rates of dental cavities falling for the past 30 years, almost half of children and adolescents and more than 55% of adults in the UK are still affected by holes in their teeth. Paul Sharpe, an expert on tooth development at the Dental Institute at King’s College London, said: “If you could find some way of growing ameloblasts that make enamel, you could find a way to repair teeth. “Any gene like this is worth understanding.

The more we learn about it the more we can use the information to make biological models of tooth repair.” Prof Sharpe’s own work focuses on using stem cells to regenerate teeth, but he said the introduction of the Human Tissue Act had made it difficult to obtain teeth from patients to do the work. “We’ve probably lost a year because we’ve not been able to get hold of the right cells, and often these are from wisdom teeth that people are choosing to have removed,” he said. In the latest research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team led by Chrissa Kioussi and Mark Leid bred mice that lacked a gene known as Ctip2. They found that the gene was crucial for the enamel-producing cells to form and work properly. By understanding the genetics of tooth development, Kioussi said it may be possible to repair damaged enamel and even produce new teeth in the laboratory. Some groups have already succeeded in growing the soft tissues inside teeth, but they do not have the hard enamel covering needed to withstand chewing and biting. “Enamel is one of the hardest coatings found in nature. It evolved to give carnivores the tough and long-lasting teeth they needed to survive,” said Kioussi. “A lot of work would still be needed to bring this to human applications, but it should work. It could be really cool; a whole new approach to dental health,” she said.

New Google Phone Gains Momentum In Spain

Google’s bid to dominate the mobile phone operating software market got a boost on Tuesday when Taiwanese handset maker HTC (???) unveiled the third phone based on the US Internet giant’s technology. The touch-screen HTC Magic is to be sold by British network operator Vodafone and its subsidiaries in Britain, France, Germany and Italy, the companies said at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Rival developers are battling to create the dominant operating system for mobile phones, with Google and its Android system competing with Microsoft, Nokia, an open-source Linux-based project and Blackberry. “We are very excited to be introducing our first Android-powered smartphone in the spring,” said Patrick Chomet, global director of terminals for Vodafone. On Monday, Chinese manufacturer Huawei (??) had revealed its first mobile phone that will run Android, meaning there are at least three “Google” phones now developed. LG and Samsung have promised their versions this year. The first phone to use the Google software was launched by HTC last October in partnership with German network operator T-Mobile. “For a new platform with open source, I am impressed with the momentum growing behind Android,” said Gavin Byrne, an analyst at telecom research group Informa. Android is “open-source,” meaning that the basic code is free for phone manufacturers and is available to other software developers who are encouraged to build applications to add on. Byrne said he still expected the system by Nokia, called Symbian, to remain dominant in the next five years, but that Android would establish itself as an alternative.

Google is hoping to establish its operating system as an industry standard, which would help drive users to its services, which include Internet search, maps and chat. HTC chief executive Peter Chou (???) stressed that people would increasingly access the Internet from their mobile devices rather than in an office or at home — particularly in the developing world. Google has recognized this, which is the reason it is so keen to establish itself and its applications in the mobile industry, analysts say. “There is a generation of people from various parts of the world who have never experienced Internet on a PC yet, but they will experience Internet on these mobile devices,” Chou said. Andy Rubin, head of Android at Google, said the project had gone from concepts and prototypes to realization in the last 12 months. The first prototypes for Android were put on display at the World Mobile Congress last year, creating a buzz among the crowds. “Last year there was a lot of promises and expectations. We delivered on those promises,” Rubin said.
He said that Android could reduce the manufacturing cost of a handset by 20 percent because the operating system is free. Sometimes we don’t even know it when they [manufacturers) announce phones with Android. They don’t need to sign a contract with us,” he said, adding that he did not judge success “by the number of handsets.” The HTC Magic is a slim, tablet-shaped device with touch-screen control that, like other high-end phones launched at the Mobile World Congress, has a resemblance to the top-selling Apple iPhone.

Junk Food During Pregnancy, Bigger Impact On Childhood Obesity

The other half got a diet similar to an American human – high-calorie and 35 per cent fat. Researchers removed the fetuses from some of the pregnant monkeys in the third trimester to study their organs, finding fatty-liver disease in the fetuses from mothers on fatty diets. Other monkeys were allowed to give birth, and the babies born to those mothers on the high-fat diets became obese. Monkeys on the junk food diet lived together and could eat as much or as little as they wanted. Some of them stayed thin, while others grew fat – but their babies all got fat, leading researchers to believe their diet in the womb made the offspring more likely to become obese. “It implicates the saturated fat in the diet as the culprit,” Professor Friedman said. A high-fat diet in the womb may also affect the “appetite centre” of the brain, meaning baby monkeys might have problems with appetite control after birth, he says. In the next phase of the study, researchers will study what happens when the baby monkeys which have been eating junk food are switched to a healthy diet.

Mother’s Obesity

•Obesity is a strong risk factor for type 2 diabetes, and diabetes in pregnant women is an established risk factor for birth defects, especially of the central nervous system and the heart.

•Performing ultrasounds of obese pregnant women is more difficult, so perhaps they might not terminate pregnancies because of fetal defects as often as thinner women.

•Research has found an association between maternal obesity and nutritional deficiencies, specifically reduced foliate levels. Women of childbearing age are advised to take 400 micrograms of folic acid a day to protect against spina bifida, but maybe that’s not enough if they’re obese, Rankin says.

But James Mills, senior investigator in the epidemiology branch at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, says there’s no evidence that bigger doses of folic acid for obese women would help. Back in 1994, Mills co-wrote the first study to link obesity in pregnancy to birth defects. It found that obese women were 2½ times more likely to have a baby with spina bifida than normal-weight women, fairly consistent with Rankin’s finding.

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